


(the beverage you’re about to enjoy is) extremely hot

by fallovermelikestars



Series: I Love It When You Prompt Me [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU fic meme, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-18 18:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2357348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallovermelikestars/pseuds/fallovermelikestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The name on his badge, pinned at a jaunty angle to his apron, reads Sirius. Like the star Remus thinks, wonders what the name would taste like on his lips and shoves his hands deep into the pocket of his trousers, offering Sirius a tentative smile in return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(the beverage you’re about to enjoy is) extremely hot

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to tumblr following a prompt for the AU fic meme. Written quickly and without a beta read.

Remus has been coming to Susie Lee’s Coffeehouse every Friday for almost three months now. Partly because it is on his walk to work, but mostly because her House Roast is the best cup of coffee you can get in this town and Remus has something of a caffeine addiction. He’d come every day if he could, but really, he’s still a low paid Government official and his budget doesn’t quite stretch to take away coffee five days a week.

On a Friday though, when it’s dress-down day at the office and he can free himself of the confines of shirt and tie and be just a little bit more him, he allows himself this small luxury. Sipping from one of Susie’s lattes as he walks the last ten minutes to work feels kind of like a reward for surviving yet another week at tedious job he’s beginning to hate. It seems silly somehow, that the heavy weight of a large paper cup housed in a dark red cardboard sleeve can make him feel so much better, but it does. As does Susie’s smile when the door chimes and Remus joins the line of people queuing at the counter. It’s never more than 4 or 5 people long this early, and Susie mans the shop on her own in a morning: Remus supposes staff need paying and that the profits there are in running a shop this small aren’t enough to warrant paying wages unless it’s absolutely necessary. It means the queue runs a little slower than it might do in the bigger franchised shops, but Remus doesn’t mind that really. He’s happy to set off fifteen minutes earlier one day a week for the few minutes of friendly conversation whilst Susie takes his money and brews his drink. 

He gets a few minutes of quiet before he reaches the counter too, a few minutes that he has come to relish, where he’ll rock forward onto his toes and back again, eyes closed and letting the smell of freshly brewed coffee, the whir of the machine and Susie’s tinkling laughter wash over him. The calm, as it were, before the storm.

In all the weeks he’s been coming here for his Friday latte, there has never been anybody but Susie behind the counter, hair scraped back into a high ponytail and smile as bright as her red apron, and it’s a jolt to his system when he looks over at the counter this morning and sees not Susie, but a man.  The queue is it’s usual four person length and as Remus lets the door fall closed behind him and walks the short distance from entryway to counter the strange-man-who-isn’t-Susie looks over at him and nods a hello before turning back to the young couple he’s serving, eyes dancing with a kind of mischief as he leans into the young girl and says something quietly, making her laugh and lean into her boyfriend.

Remus watches with barely disguised curiosity as the man takes money and bags cakes and froths milk like he’s been doing it his whole life, all the while chatting and laughing with customers with an ease not dissimilar to that of Susie herself, the kind of small talk that Remus finds excruciating most days but has come to relish here. There’s no closing his eyes and taking a moment today: he can’t tear his gaze away, has to concentrate on not out and out staring; the man is like a magnet and Remus is drawn to him, to his dark hair and dark eyes, full of laughter and something else, like mystery; to the angle of his wrist as he pours milk from jug to cup and the way the hairs on his forearms glisten in the bright lights overhead; to his laugh, deep and almost barking; the way his movements are fluid and somehow lazy, he moves fast, without a second’s hesitation but at the same time makes it seem as though he’s never hurried for a moment in his life. His eyes crinkle when he smiles and the gentle upwards curve of his lips when he turns, finally, to Remus, is enough to make Remus’s heart beat faster, faster, faster.

The name on his badge, pinned at a jaunty angle to his apron, reads Sirius. Like the star Remus thinks, wonders what the name would taste like on his lips and shoves his hands deep into the pocket of his trousers, offering Sirius a tentative smile in return.

‘Well, aren’t you a sight for these awake too early eyes.’

Remus huffs out a laugh, the casual almost-flirtation entirely unexpected and says, ‘where’s Susie?’

‘Holiday. I had to damn well force her to go though. I think she thinks this place will fall to rack and ruin if she leaves it even for a millisecond. You’re stuck with me I’m afraid’ he stretches a hand across the counter. ‘I’m Sirius.’

‘I gathered,’ Remus smiles, shaking Sirius’s hand and gesturing to his chest and Sirius looks down at himself in surprise as though he’d forgotten the badge was pinned there.

‘Observant too,’ Sirius says, and it feels like flirting, yet there’s no tease to his voice, just a matter-of-factness as he grabs a cup from the stack and fixes Remus with that smile again, ‘what can I get you…?’

‘Remus,’ Remus says, ‘and a large latte please. Extra shot.’

‘Late night?’ Sirius asks, accepting the five pound note that Remus passes over and counting out his change without missing a beat, ‘or preparation for a less than stellar Friday.’

‘The latter. My job…it’s hardly a vocation, put it that way.’ Remus wonders even as he talks what it is about this beautiful boy with delicate wristbones and a look in his eye that doesn’t quite match his smile, that makes him want to bear his soul. Sirius hums in response and as he froths the milk he manages to tease from Remus more information that his closest friends have gotten out of him in months: his general dissatisfaction with his work, his desire for something more although he’s not entirely sure what, how really, he’d like to take a few months out and just go somewhere - anywhere - with no itinerary and nobody to answer to.

‘Then you should do it.’ Sirius tells him seriously, writing something on his coffee cup in black Sharpie, ‘and if you need company, well, I’d go with you.  I have a serious case of wanderlust, and nothing much keeping me here.’

He’s joking, he should be joking, but somehow despite the way he grins, and laughs - almost manically - it feels like he’s not, like if Remus turned up later today with a rucksack and two train tickets then Sirius would throw off his apron and follow him.

‘You should follow your dreams Remus, really,’ and his fingers brush against  Remus’s as he hands over his drink. ‘Nobody else will follow them for you. I’m here til Monday; don’t be a stranger.’

He doesn’t know what it is that makes him study his coffee cup this morning; he never usually bothers, perhaps it’s that he wants to know more, expects to find the answers in Sirius’s scrawl of black pen. He laughs out loud at what he does see, a rush of warmth beginning at his ears and spreading to the tips of his toes. Selected words that make up the warning ( _caution, the beverage you’re about to enjoy is extremely hot_ ) in tiny print near the bottom of the cup have been crossed out, so that now rather than a cautionary message it’s more of a declaration, only three words having survived a black line through them.

_you’re extremely hot._

There’s an arrow pointing upwards, beneath the cardboard sleeve. Unable to keep the smile off his face, Remus slides the sleeve down to reveal a message in an untidy hand: ‘ _and I’d like to see you again_.’

Remus has no plans after work today. Perhaps he’ll follow his dreams after all.


End file.
